But Where Did Bush Go Wrong?

by Patrick J. Buchanan - Novermber 4th, 2008 - Human Events

That Bush is a Big Government Republican is undeniable. His two great social spending initiatives, prescription drug benefits for seniors under Medicare and No Child Left Behind, so testify. But how many Republicans opposed Bush on these initiatives? How many have called for the abolition of either program, or for raising payroll taxes to pay for prescription drugs?

McCain now supports the Bush judges and justices and the Bush tax cuts, as do almost all Republicans.

True, Bush sought amnesty for illegal aliens and backs the free-trade globalism that exported our manufacturing base and 3 million to 4 million jobs.

Issues. No matter how much you disagree with Pat Buchanan, the one problem you have to deal with is he talks about real issues. I think it important that conservatives deal with some of his issues as they are a part of the reason we are falling apart as a cohesive philosophy.

The Republican Party has two major "single issue" constituents that I fear.

One is the "Wall Street" socialists. Not capitalists, socialists. Wall Street doesn't have a problem with anything that hurts small business and destroys competition because corporate socialism is perfectly okay to them. They only care about capital gains taxes. Few small businesses get anything from capital gains. Wall Street is composed of "free trade" extremists who don't care if other nations practice free trade or not. They are perfectly willing to move your job overseas to a country that bans American products as long as there are no barriers to import by America. That to Wall Street is free trade.

The other single issue consituency of interest to Republicans is the "pro life" extremists who demand that you believe life begins at conception. They really don't care about ending abortions. Even when it is clear that late term abortions could be ended by focusing on "viability", they will not bend on the demand that you must accept their premise that life begins at conception. If you don't, you are evil and they will assure that you have no chance to be elected in a Republican primary. It doesn't even matter if you agree with them 90%, anything short of 100% will cause these extremists to vilify you.

I can never stop laughing at the fact that Buchanan hates the first group and loves the second.

On the third issue of this article, Buchanan has a simple solution. The war in Iraq was a mistake because we adopted the neo-conservative belief that we must change the middle east, foster democracy and end the dictatorships that power the Islamo-fascist movement extremists in their opposition to the status quo. Buchanan says lets just walk away. There is a worthwhile discussion over whether the goal is a mistake or the failure to explain the goal is the mistake. That discussion has never taken place. Since Bush is such a tone deaf inarticulate leader, the policy has failed. Buchanan is right about that. No policy that a war President cannot explain is the right policy and Bush has not seriously defended his position and goals. Republicans are being crucified on that Bush failure.

Though I remain opposed to Buchanan solutions on many issues, I don't take issue with his listing of Bush failures. Bush has been a disaster for Republicans, and I agree with Buchanan that the first step to regaining our party for libertarian-conservatives is to stop supporting the disastrous policies that have cost us public support. Bush MUST be repudiated.

Great article.